The Kellys and the O'Kellys eBook

unhappy about her son for a few years after his first
entrance on a life in London, but latterly she had
begun to be a little uneasy. Tidings of the great
amount of his debts reached even her ears; and, moreover,
it was nearly time that he should reform and settle
down. During the last twelve months she had remarked
fully twelve times, to Griffiths, that she wondered
when Kilcullen would marry?—­and she had
even twice asked her husband, whether he didn’t
think that such a circumstance would be advantageous.
She was therefore much rejoiced to hear that her son
was coming to live at home. But then, why was
it so sudden? It was quite proper that the house
should be made a little gay for his reception; that
he shouldn’t be expected to spend his evenings
with no other society than that of his father and
mother, his sister and his cousin; but how was she
to get the house ready for the people, and the people
ready for the house, at so very short a notice?—­What
trouble, also, it would be to her!—­Neither
she nor Griffiths would know another moment’s
rest; besides—­and the thought nearly drove
her into hysterics,—­where was she to get
a new cook?

However, she promised her husband to do her best.
She received from him a list of people to be invited,
and, merely stipulating that she shouldn’t be
required to ask any one except the parson of the parish
under a week, undertook to make the place as bearable
as possible to so fastidious and distinguished a person
as her own son.

Her first confidante was, of course, Griffiths; and,
with her assistance, the wool and the worsted, and
the knitting-needles, the unfinished vallances and
interminable yards of fringe, were put up and rolled
out of the way; and it was then agreed that a council
should be held, to which her ladyship proposed to
invite Lady Selina and Fanny. Griffiths, however,
advanced an opinion that the latter was at present
too lack-a-daisical to be of any use in such a matter,
and strengthened her argument by asserting that Miss
Wyndham had of late been quite mumchance [44].
Lady Cashel was at first rather inclined to insist
on her niece being called to the council, but Griffiths’s
eloquence was too strong, and her judgment too undoubted;
so Fanny was left undisturbed, and Lady Selina alone
summoned to join the aged female senators of Grey
Abbey.

[FOOTNOTE 44: mumchance—­silent
and idle]

“Selina,” said her ladyship, as soon as
her daughter was seated on the sofa opposite to her
mother’s easy chair, while Griffiths, having
shut the door, had, according to custom, sat herself
down on her own soft-bottomed chair, on the further
side of the little table that always stood at the
countess’s right hand. “Selina, what
do you think your father tells me?”

Lady Selina couldn’t think, and declined guessing;
for, as she remarked, guessing was a loss of time,
and she never guessed right.